At 4:58 AM this morning, Nathan Omotoyinbo Obasanjo became the newest addition to our family. He was a healthy 9 pounds 6 ounces and was born at the Eastside Birth Center in Bellevue. His journey into our home has been fraught with delays and some drama which I'll recount here for posterity.

Tuesday – October 14th

At around midnight his mother let me know that she'd been having contractions for the past few hours and was ready to call the midwives. We drove to the birthcenter and arrived sometime before 2 AM. We were met by the midwife on call (Loren Riccio) who was later joined by two interns (not sure if that's what they're called). We also called my mother-in-law and she joined us there about 30 minutes later.  After a few hours and some time spent getting in and out of the tub (we planned to have a water birth) it became clear that my wife was either going through pre-labor or false labor and we were sent home at around 6AM.  We got home and I slept for about three or four hours then had to rush into work because I was scheduled to give a talk on the platform we built to power a key feature in Windows Live's Wave 3 release at Microsoft. I got there on time, the presentation was well received and I got to chat with my management folks about some blog drama that blew up the previous night. When I scheduled the presentation, I'd assumed Nathan would already have been born since the midwives gave us a due date of October 7th. Thankfully, my wife's mom stayed with her at home so I didn't have to make the choice between leaving my wife by herself at home and giving the talk. Later that day we went in for our previously scheduled midwife appointment with Christine Thain. She suggested that we come in the next day if the labor didn't kick in that night.

Wednesday - October 15th

We actually went in to see Christine twice that day. We went in early in the morning and she gave us some herbs (Gossypium) that are supposed to encourage the onset of labor. So we had a delicious lunch at Qdoba and ran a bunch of errands before going back to see Christine later that evening. She checked Jenna's progress and it didn't look like the baby was ready to be born yet. At this point we started questioning whether we wanted to stay the course with a natural childbirth and wait possibly for another week before the baby was born or if we wanted to go to a hospital and have an induction of labor. To take our minds of the waiting game, we decided to watch Don't Mess with the Zohan as a lighthearted diversion to keep our spirits up. It didn't help much especially since the movie was awful. During the movie, Jenna started having contractions and after confirming that they seemed more productive than from Monday night we called the midwife and the mother-in-law then rushed to the birth center. Unfortunately, it turned out to be another false alarm. At this point we started feeling like the boy who cried wolf especially since we'd had the two interns get up out of bed twice during the past two days.

Thursday - October 16th

Around 5AM Jenna woke me up and told me that she'd been having contractions for the past hour. Since we'd already scheduled an early morning checkup with Christine for 8AM we didn't feel the need to call the birth center's emergency number. When we got to the birth center there was already someone else going through labor in the birth suite. So we had to have an office visit where we learned that these contractions weren't productive either. At this point we made the call that we'd go in to the hospital on Friday to have the baby induced and had Christine make an appointment. Later that day we were grocery shopping and we got a call from Christine. We decided to go in one more time to the birth center to see if we could get one last checkup before going to the hospital on Friday. When we got there the lady from the morning was still in labor almost eleven hours later. So we had another office visit and discussed the pros & cons of going to the hospital versus trying to wait out a natural birth. At the end of the talk we stuck with the decision to go to the hospital although that was dependent on there being available beds.

Friday - October 17th

At about 1:30 AM I'm awoken by my wife who's going through very painful contractions. After timing the contractions for a while we decide to go into the birth center. This time I don't call my mother-in-law until after we've arrived at the birth center and the progress of the labor was confirmed. I also send a text message to my mom telling her yet again that we're having the baby and this time it's for real. Nathan was born just over 2 hours after we arrived at the birth center. Later on we found out that the lady who'd been in the labor or the entirety of the previous day ended up being sent to the hospital and had her baby at around the same time Nathan was being born.

So far, our previous addition to the family has been getting along great with Nathan.

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